The type of day that makes you listen to warbly chanteuses and troubadors pour out their melancholic hearts through your headphones. You ache for times past and friends that live an ocean apart.

Time was soft then. We were smart and cooler then we knew. Spurred on by the blind mission to be different.

Polaroid dreams now. Climbing buildings. Dance parties. Easy laughter. Gang wars. Fearless with a smile. Waiting impatient for the day we’d be free from the John Hughes tropes.

But the layer of humidity falls off sooner then expected and cloying memories evaporate. It’s time to begin again and live for the clear and ever present now. Trying your damnedest to stay focused while ambition and clarity are clouded by late night anxieties. Answers aren’t locked in photo albums or treacly blog posts.

But we try to escape the grasps of reality through celluloid dreams, six word stories, second guesses and procrastination. Perhaps this cocktail of evasion will work its magic but for right now … it’s fueling a healthy habit of misdirection.

I was all sloth and contempt. Self inflicted wounds courtesy of cabin fever and a Vitamin D deficiency. If this were the fur trade I’d have been the first with scurvy. I was clawing for answers. Living with my head in the past – stuck in dank and humid memories refusing to see what was right in front of me. Clear as day.

~~~~

Looking at the skyline I sighed.

“It’s beautiful right?”

“Yeah…I’m almost starting to like it here.”

She bit her tongue. She wanted to say: “Well I’m here.” She didn’t out of fear of seeming needy. Don’t show weakness the rule books say. Be independent. Don’t open up. Don’t expose yourself for being anything else but a wry maven with wit in spades. Protect yourself … bite your tongue.

He looked at her silhouette in the stillness of an urban dusk and sighed. She laughed at his weariness. They stuck their feet in the water and let them sink in the quick sand as water lapped against the shore.

Inspiration can eat away at you sometimes. It can corrode your well being and suck clarity out of the ether that surrounds you. To put it simply. Inspiration can cloud your judgement. Wallowing in self pity can lead to great prose but after those words have flowed out of the tips of your fingers and on to the pad of paper it needs to be expelled. Move on. Find something new. Something sweeter that confounds and compels you to sing. Lingering can bring you no good. Only heartache.

Keep moving. Push yourself. Seek it out.

I sound like a self-help guru.

I haven’t posted in a while for that very reason. My inspiration stagnated. I held on to what I thought was good stuff until it was rotting in my hands. Limp and petty. My anger had gone. So had my need for clarity and closure. There comes a point when you just can’t live in the past anymore. It’s debilitating. Yet when you live in a fog memories and it’s comfortable, calm and sweetly melancholic it’s hard to just say: fuck it. It’s hard to understand why you’d leave.

Then after one too many night of licking your wounds alone on the beach at night. Or telling the same story. Or reading the same passage you realize you’re fading. Pale. Sallow. Weak. That aint no way to live. Worst of all you’re at a loss of words. And that…you’ll think is never a good sign.

So with confidence, conviction and commitment you let bygones be bygones and breathe a sigh of relief and move the hell on with your small, slightly insignificant but nevertheless entertaining life.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the word “Slut” as: “a slovenly or promiscuous woman,” it’s derived from Middle English and has no known origin. The OED may be the most definitive record of the English language – but that definition is being hotly contested by a group of feminist activists based in Toronto. On April 3rd their voices were heard, thanks to the first annual SlutWalk. A protest that promised to tackle the destructive practice of victim blaming in instances of sexual assault, redefine the word “slut” and act as a counter argument to the disparaging remarks made by Toronto Constable Michael Sanguinetti. Who, at a York University event in late January, said: “if girls stopped dressing like sluts,” they could prevent being raped. His much-quoted slip of the tongue sparked a flurry of debate about sexism in the police force and the myth of the “slut” in our society.

I’m happiest when the sun goes down.
Don’t get me wrong. I love a sunny day what with its picnics, patios, swimming, biking and promenading. But there’s something about night that is refreshing. There’s a quiet respected rhythm of the night.
I do my best thinking at night. I write better, I read better. I love the sound of movement in the distance – all that immediate and distracting waste that surrounds us during the day is washed away in the gloaming. We’re left with clean, promising darkness.
A little while ago, I found myself walking home in the middle of the night. It was close to 3 in the morning. I had missed the last train and had taken the night bus back to the east end. It was a clean, clear, calm winter night. With snow up to my knees. No wind. Still as can be. I stopped and looked at the most dazzling moon. I was at ease, total peace. I could care less that it was three in the morning, that my feet were tired and my lids were heavy. There was this inexplicable calm I felt … night is night. If I got home in fifteen minutes or an hour what difference would it make? As soon as the sun sets and the light is snuffed out and that molasses thick darkness descends – the tricks and tired tropes of the day dissolve. This all sounds like two-bit philosophy. But it’s intangible. It’s inspiring. It isn’t ominous.

I wrote this awful little play once called “A Couple of Nighthawks”. It was about this ex-couple, who meet again in a 24 Hour diner. I thought it was good. It really isn’t. But the inspiration came from Hopper’s magnificent painting and my fascination with the hours when most are asleep. What conversations happen at 2 on Wednesday morning? Are hearts are being broken? Do people find happiness before dawn? Night allows for questioning – rhetorical and otherwise – it prompts curiosity and longing, because you become acutely aware of how alone you are. In my play I tried to make my characters sound terribly world weary and broken against the backdrop of the night…but who knows if it worked. Where it does seem to be working is in this movie The Off Hours. It’s simple, poetic and smart. Watch the trailer. You won’t be displeased.

This time last year a couple of us English people at Guelph were organizing a grad party with profs and students. I volunteered to be our valedictorian. People kept telling me that I wasn’t in fact the valedictorian because that’s a position that is voted on by your peers. I ceded to their logic and just called myself a speaker (but in my head I still said I was the valedictorian). Anywhos long story short, these past weeks I’ve been trying to rid some insidious nostalgia. The type that washes over you in heavy waves, blurs your vision and rationale. In one of those periods of rose-tinted memories I dug out the speech I wrote for the party. Beyond the nostlagia factor, I was proud of it then and I am proud of it now. So in memory of the past and in celebration of the future … Continue reading →